


Surfing the River Lethe

by oneiriad



Category: The Almighty Johnsons, Xī yóu jì | Journey to the West - Wú Cheng'en
Genre: Crossover, Drug Use, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-15
Updated: 2012-04-15
Packaged: 2017-11-03 16:54:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/383742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oneiriad/pseuds/oneiriad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It had been something in the nature of an escape, him leaving New Zealand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Surfing the River Lethe

It had been something in the nature of an escape, him leaving New Zealand.

Sometimes it made him feel guilty, him having left - having left the boy, left him on the other side of the vast ocean - but how could he have stayed? How could he have stayed without her? When he had seen her die, seen her spirit rise with her last breath, bright and shining and beautiful as a shattered heart?

He thinks he might have gone a little mad.

Not that he hadn't been mad before - before her. Before meeting her in the crowd, stumbling at the whisper of _goddess_ , of _Nanna_ dancing through his mind like a summer breeze. How could he not have been, when his dreams were still full of fire and blood and the scream of planes falling from the sky, even these long years after the young man he had truly been at the time had joined up and soared the skies, driven by dreams he had nobody around to explain, dreams of things they did, the Germans, things that were an insult, to him, to Baldr, to all the Aesir.

How could he not have gone mad from her loss?

At least he had managed to leave the boy with his daughter - and oh, the pain of seeing her, so like the girl he had loved in the too brief days of his leave, and wrong, so wrong, a grown woman now and him still young, so impossibly young.

"Hey, Olaf," and he looks up at Jimmy's approach, dragged away from his train of thought and back into the carefree, California sunlight. "Ready to catch some waves?"

It's somewhat in the nature of rhetorical question, really. Because Jimmy knows perfectly well that Olaf is always ready for the waves, for the rush, for the high that drowns out everything else - for just a little while.

But never for long enough.

As they lie on the sand, watching old Mother Nature putting on the spectacular classic that is commonly known among lesser minds as the sunset, he feels the thoughts coming back, a chill that makes him slide that bit closer to Jimmy, soaking up the line of heat against his side.

"How do you manage? How do you - go on?"

He regrets the question even before he has finished asking it - it's too close, too close to the things they never speak of, the secrets under the skin that made them both hesitate one moment longer that day in the bookshop. Far too close and not safe at all. But all Jimmy does is raise himself up on his elbow and look at him, his joint dangling between two fingers, glowing tip like a dancing firefly.

"How? You just - do, Olaf. You just do."

Jimmy slides the joint in between Olaf's lips and as he breathes deeply he tells himself that it's just the drugs, that Jimmy's eyes doesn't glow yellow like an animal's, just for a moment, blink and you'll miss it, before going back to being as brown and warm as ever.

"What else can we do?"

He's about to attempt an answer, but then he is distracted by the warm slide of Jimmy moving, weight settling like a bad - no, a good, a very good idea - and it occurs to him that it's just as well that they picked this lonesome stretch of sand, because otherwise... but then Jimmy Sun leans down to kiss him and he forgets the rest of that thought, forgets everything.

For just a little while.

**Author's Note:**

> According to [this page](http://thealmightyjohnsons.co.nz/characters/the-johnsons/), it wasn't until the 1960s that Olaf got into the whole surfing, drugs and free love lifestyle - this ficlet is my attempt to explain what might have lead him there.


End file.
